The Blue Bell, Pa., OEM and its key partner will demonstrate the forthcoming 64-bit OS Windows .Net Server 2003, Datacenter Edition and 64-bit SQL Server running on Unisys' 32-way ES7000 SMP server at the Windows conference.

Bill Gates unveils Windows Media 9, after nearly four years of development at a cost of about $500 million. It challenges RealNetworks for digital dominance.

Linux on XBox made quite a progress lately, but now, Jeremy Penner of Astra Network has managed to get QNX 6.2 to boot on his Sega Dreamcast. It only took Jeremy a couple days to get it booting 6.2. Read about it at QNXZone.

Robert Szeleney have applied a new GUI engine on SkyOS, and it now supports themes. Screenshot available (albeit the way the 4 shots were not resized correctly so it doesn't look right). Additionally, MenuetOS 0.71pre1 was released recently.

"From the moment Mac OS X was announced, one of its most compelling features for me was its ability to run Mac and Unix software at the same time. It meant I wouldn't have to keep multiple systems around, booting into one or the other as needed. And now, with the release of version 10.2 (aka Jaguar), OS X is a better Unix than ever. Make no mistake: Mac OS X has been a real Unix from the start, albeit one that could actually run desktop apps like Microsoft Office, Photoshop, and BBEdit, and let you play Warcraft III and (soon) Halo. But now, Jaguar's Unix underpinnings have been given a much-needed refresh." Read the editorial at ZDNet.

Jusitn Gasper writes: "I have just posted some information about a GNU/Linux distribution, FlameThrower, that I am working on. I am planning it to be a contender in the media box market. I have not released any files yet, that should be coming in a few weeks, but I have put up some screenshots, and would like some input back as to how I could maybe make my software easier to use or theme."

A recent white paper suggesting that an architectural flaw exists in Windows has generated interest in the press and on security mailing lists. While some of the report's findings are correct, its core assertion – that there is an architectural flaw in Windows – is inaccurate, Microsoft says. The Microsoft Security Response Center has thoroughly investigated the report's claims, and they would like to provide information about our findings and the planned future steps.

Intel will uncork the company's nanotechnology strategies at its developer conference next week in San Jose, Calif., shedding some light on the future of its chips.

In an open letter to Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, a group of users has called for the company to make Solaris 9 available on the lion's share of computers based on the Intel architecture. The letter, published as an ad in the San Jose Mercury News and titled "Shame on you, Scott", is the latest move in an eight-month war of words between Sun and a vocal contingent of its users. The spat kicked off in January when the software maker said it would put its next operating system, Solaris 9, on indefinite hold for the x86 architecture. Read more at News.com.

Looking to get a piece of the growing market for mobile services in China, a Chinese Linux developer has released an open-source alternative to smart-phone software from Microsoft and Symbian. China MobileSoft Ltd. (CMS) built its mLinux for Smart Phones software around its mLinux kernel, which is derived from a Linux kernel developed by Red Hat Inc., said Liu Bing, business manager at CMS at the CeBIT Asia show on Monday. The mLinux kernel requires 200K bytes of memory and can be used in 3G (third-generation) mobile handsets, he said.

The OpenBFS team today announced that they finally moved to beta stage. This means that OpenBFS (the free and open source alternative, but fully compatible BeOS File System clone) is completely done feature-wise and only testing is missing now. OSNews (over)heard that "the query engine is way faster than the BFS one _and_ it supports searching on non-indexed attributes. Also it performs at least as good as BFS and in some test cases it is even considerably faster than it.".

Monday morning, Microsoft announced the completion of Windows XP Media Center Edition, which will power new media center PCs from companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Samsung beginning next month. XP Media Center is the latest Windows version, and one of several products which rely on XP Service Pack 1 (SP1), which was finalized last week.

So what exactly are Sun's plans? While precise details remain close to Sun's chest, it is clear that the company is planning to assemble a suite of both open source and proprietary software products with which to go head to head with Microsoft. Some of these, such as the MySQL open source database, Sendmail messaging software, Samba file and print software, Apache web server, Mozilla browser, and Gnome desktop, have already been discussed by Sun executives. Our Take: At LinuxWorld, I saw their default configuration of Gnome 2 on Solaris. It looked pretty bad, while their X server did not even support AA. I don't think they are going anywhere to "assault" Microsoft. They might "assault" some other Unix or even Linux vendors, but their game will stop there.

In Parts I and II of this series, LinuxGazette examined the process of using tools available with Linux to build a simple boot sector and access the system BIOS. The toy OS will be closely modelled after the Linux kernel - and it will be switching to protected mode soon! This part III shows how it can be done.